TechEd–4 All Over but the Party

Summary: Microsoft Scripting Guy, Ed Wilson, talks about the last day of TechEd 2013 North America in New Orleans.

Today began like yesterday ended – with a room full of Windows PowerShell enthusiasts. Yesterday I had the privilege to share the stage with Glenn Sizemore and Don Jones. These two community leaders are absolutely awesome, and would make a pet rock seem like a flawless conversationalist. Our session, Birds-of-a-Feather: Lessons learned from the 2013 Scripting Games, was completely full when I arrived 30 minutes before the session. The event staff watching the door told me afterwards that ours was the most popular session she had seen in that room all week and she had to turn away 80 people. Here is a picture I took of the audience before we got started.

I handed the camera to one of the people on the front row and asked him to snap a couple of pictures of us. Here is a picture of Don, Glenn, and me.

OK. So back to today. Yep, the day began the same way. Here is a picture that Boe Prox (Honorary Scripting Guy) snapped for me of the Instructor Led Lab. You can see the room is packed.

What is really amazing here, is that this was Thursday at 8:30 in the morning. So people had to get up around 6:00 to ride the bus to the Convention Center, eat breakfast, and hike the 1/2 mile to the other end of the building. And this is New Orleans with all the great things to do! Anyway, I told people I met to try to get there early to make sure they got a seat. As it turned out, that was good advice. The person in charge of the lab told me that attendees had begun lining up 45 minutes before they even opened the doors for the lab. Everyone really enjoyed being some of the first people in the world to experiment with the new Desire State Configuration feature of Windows PowerShell 4.0…it absolutely rocked!

Following the ILL, principal program manager lead for Windows Manageability, Kenneth Hansen, came to the Scripting Guys booth. He was there for two reasons. First, to talk to all the people who came around the booth. Second, he wanted to see a script that Chris Duck had written to change the lights on the Scripting Wife’s new Windows 8 AlienWare laptop. It is cool! Here is a picture.

As seen here, his antics soon had Kenneth and Hal Rottenberg in stitches.

Following the departure of BatchMan, Kurt Hudson, a senior technical writer at Microsoft, came over and presented Chris Duck with a custom Dr. Scripto figure that Kurt had made.

He also awarded one to Brian Wilhite for his contributions to the Windows PowerShell community.

The custom Dr. Scripto’s are absolutely awesome. Here is a close up.

Following the awards presentations, Mark Minasi showed up to talk to visitors at the Scripting Guys booth. He too wanted to see the Scripting Wife’s new Windows 8 laptop with the custom Windows PowerShell script that blinked all the lights.

As you can see, it was a great time at TechEd 2013 North America in New Orleans. There is still the party tonight, but like I said, it is nearly over. The four days were an awesome time for me to meet and to connect with nearly 1,800 IT pros, some of whom are extremely experienced with Windows PowerShell, and others who are excited to begin use this fascinating management tool.

Over the next few weeks, you will begin seeing lots of exciting new guest blog writers from the community, in addition to seeing blog posts from me based on feedback I received from the community.